CHICAGO – The Florida Department of Health, Bureau of Epidemiology, and The New York City Department of Health & Mental Hygiene have been named the two winners of the HIMSS Public Health Davies Award of Excellence, for the value their IT systems bring to the populations that they serve.

The public health award is one of four award categories of the Davies including organizational, ambulatory and community health organizations. There have been 14 public health Davies award winners to date. Announcements concerning other HIMSS Davies winners are expected next month.

“The HIMSS Public Health Davies Award Committee congratulates these two award winners for their ongoing dedication to preserving quality health outcomes through their respective public health systems,” said Julia E. Gunn, RN, chair, of the 2011 committee, and a 2009 HIMSS Davies Public Health Award winner with the Boston Syndromic Surveillance System or B-SYNSS.

The Florida Department of Health, Bureau of Epidemiology, was recognized by HIMSS for its Electronic Surveillance System for the Early Notification of Community-based Epidemics, Florida (ESSENCE-FL). ESSENCE-FL serves the state of Florida population, 18 million residents plus all visitors  to the state (80.3 million annually). With the state’s diverse population doubling in the last 20 years, state officials say the ESSENCE-FL system meets the demand for a single system that could be used to work with many different types of health data.

Based in Tallahassee, Fla., the Florida Department of Health (FDOH), Division of Disease Control, Bureau of Epidemiology, Acute Disease Epidemiology Section, manages the ESSENCE-FL system.  A surveillance epidemiologist recruits and enrolls participating hospitals, expands the system to include new data sources, operates the system from day to day, and carries out regular epidemiologic analyses. He has support both from information technology contract staff and from epidemiologic colleagues in the section.

The system works by collecting disparate data sources in ESSENCE-FL to support a process that takes thousands of individual data points, categorizes and aggregates them, and translates them into “information for action.” State- and county-level epidemiologists across all FDOH program areas rely on and use the system to detect outbreaks and unusual cases and monitor deaths and injury or illness after events, such as hurricanes, wildfires, earthquakes, pandemic influenza, the Gulf oil spill, etc.

For example, a county user of ESSENCE-FL detected a cluster of four patients who came to the emergency department in a short period of time. By following up with the hospital, the county health department found all patients had purchased and eaten food from the same grocery store deli. An inspection of the deli found food heating lamps were not working, and food temperatures were below the hot holding recommended temperature. The deli corrected the situation by replacing the heat lamps and discarding the temperature-abused food; this happened before the illness had been reported to public health because the source of the illness was found and quickly remedied to prevent further illness.

“The Florida Department of Health is pleased to receive this significant national award that highlights the quality and depth of Florida's communicable disease surveillance staff and systems," said Steven L. Harris, MD, deputy secretary for health for the Florida Department of Health. "The ability to efficiently access multiple data sources in one system enhances our efforts to identify outbreaks or unusual trends more rapidly, conduct analyses and provide evidence-based reports to our community stakeholders, which leads to the timely implementation of disease control recommendations."

The New York City Department of Health & Mental Hygiene was recognized by HIMSS for its Primary Care Information Project. The Primary Care Information Project (PCIP) is a Bureau of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (NYC DOHMH) designed to improve the quality of care in underserved communities through health IT. With a staff of 95, PCIP has extended prevention-oriented EHRs to over 2,800 NYC primary care providers working in underserved settings. This virtually integrated healthcare system includes 541 independent small practices, 38 community health centers and three hospitals. Collectively, these practices serve more than two million patients in NYC; about one quarter of the total NYC population.

These practices, selected for their high volumes of Medicaid and uninsured patients, all have access to shared resources, such as clinical quality and technical staff, a unified public health hub, quality dashboards and group trainings. By leveraging data derived from this EHR network, PCIP allows the NYC DOHMH to conduct programs in a more strategic, data-driven manner.  By being connected to PCIP, these independent practices have access to important tools that can save lives and improve population health. 

Early findings from PCIP have shown improvements in quality across multiple clinical preventive services.   In a recent study of practices participating in PCIP, 52 percent of patients had their high cholesterol managed more effectively (up from 39 percent at the outset), 56 percent of those with high blood pressure had it under control (up from 49 percent), and 20 percent of those with diabetes controlled their A1c levels (up from 14 percent).

"We at the New York City Health Department are honored to receive this recognition for our Primary Care Information Project's success in influencing the health of New Yorkers through health information technology," said New York City Health Commissioner Thomas Farley.

"Health information from this project not only helps us identify city-wide public health issues, it provides physicians with unprecedented feedback about the health of their patients. We look forward to the continued success of this program and to sharing what we've learned with other public health organizations and municipalities."